


Need

by lazaefair



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alpha Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, M/M, Omega Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, xena levels of historical accuracy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:09:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27842029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazaefair/pseuds/lazaefair
Summary: That is what Nicky does for Joe: anchor him, stop him from flying out into space on the strength of his passion, his anger, his caring. In turn, Joe draws Nicky out, stopping him from turning ever inward until he’s trapped himself in loneliness and hatred. Two halves of a whole, bound together always in spirit (and for the next day or so, in body). It has been this way for them since the beginning.Smut that accidentally grew the barest nubbins of character study. But only a little, mind you.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 18
Kudos: 203





	Need

_Awareness comes back to Joe slowly, rising up on the filmy edge of fevered heat-dreams like drifting soap bubbles, until he’s finally woken into a world that has been filled entirely with Nicky. His alpha. Blanketing him completely, surrounding him with scent and sweat and warm skin – over and around and in him – nothing exists except for Nicky, holding him down on the bed with the weight of his love. And his knot. Sweet merciful angels, the exquisite heavy pressure of the knot in Joe’s ass, stretching him out so deliciously he’s threatening to pass out again._

_He only just manages to squeeze out a helpless, “Nicolò,” on a scratchy moan, and gets a kiss to his sweat-soaked temple as a reward._

_“I have you,” Nicky says in old Ligurian, and kisses him again on his slack, trembling mouth. Soft and lingering, undoing him as surely as anything else they’ve done during this particular heat, until Joe has calmed back down. Is less overwhelmed with the intensity of everything._

_That is what Nicky does for Joe: anchor him, stop him from flying out into space on the strength of his passion, his anger, his caring. In turn, Joe draws Nicky out, stopping him from turning ever inward until he’s trapped himself in loneliness and hatred. Two halves of a whole, bound together always in spirit (and for the next day or so, in body). It has been this way for them since the beginning._

*

Well, strictly speaking, it was a few days after the beginning. Between the stench of the battlefield - the piss, shit and blood, the unwashed bodies, the sight and smell of death saturating all senses - and the mind-clouding rage, and then the horrified confusion when he resurrected from his own death, and then the all-encompassing grief as the rape of al-Quds went on and on, Yusuf did not catch the scent of Nicolò – did not recognize it for what it was – until after his fourth or fifth death.

They were alone together for that final encounter. Alone in the pre-dawn light at a deserted village well some distance from al-Quds where Yusuf had dragged himself after it became clear there was nothing more he could do. His unkillable enemy had apparently had a similar idea, separated from his fellow invaders, rearing back startled from where he'd been drinking straight from the bucket, and the scent of him hit Yusuf like a blow to the head. 

Yusuf's body came alive in an entirely different way from the miraculous healing of the last few days, singing _mate, rightness, claim_ in his very bones, so strong he could do nothing but stare. 

From the widening of the invader's eyes, he’d smelled it too. Right before he abruptly choked, vomiting bile and blood, and collapsed dead in the dust at Yusuf's feet.

Right. Poisoned wells.

Numb from his head to his toes, Yusuf still did nothing, watching until the invader coughed himself back to life, because of course he did. With life, the scent returned, and with it, the knowledge that this was the one whom God had chosen to be the most compatible mate for him, the one meant to take him and cherish him and fill him with life. This was the stuff of songs and legends. It was a cosmic joke so grotesque he could no longer physically bear it anymore, and folded ungracefully onto his ass right next to the invader's prone body.

Who turned his head and looked at Yusuf with as much horror in his piercingly pale gaze as Yusuf felt, but for the first time since their eyes met while busy slaughtering each other, the invader did not try to kill him. It was a start.

*

_“Ssshh,” Nicky soothes, but just how in the hell is Joe supposed to stay quiet while Nicky is oh-so-deliberately grinding his knot against Joe’s shuddering insides like that, is what Joe would like to know. Every shift of their hips together sends pleasure-pulses cascading all through his body until he’s weak with it, groaning into Nicky’s neck, every scrap of poetry long since scrambled to unintelligibility._

_He’s hard again, aching and already hurtling to a second orgasm. Thank fuck. Nicky doesn’t edge or deny him when he’s like this, knowing how genuinely painful it can be. Nine centuries – and still his husband honors the truce they made between themselves so long ago. Joe can say nothing, can do nothing, except clamp down with all the desperate heat-fueled strength in him and pour his love out in jagged spurts until they’re both gasping for air, shaking and spent._

*

They didn’t speak of their mutual revelation as they trudged further and further away from the city. They didn't speak at all. Yusuf's stomach churned and churned, both with the waking nightmares of what he had lived through, and with the effort of keeping himself from seeking refuge in his mate's arms as every animal instinct in him was screaming to do. 

They hadn't touched since they last laid hands on each other in violence. The weight of the invader's eyes on him burned on his skin anyway.

“Nicolò,” the invader finally said after hours of silence. In the flickering light from their tiny campfire, he looked even more exhausted, heavy brow and angular cheeks carved out in hollow shadows.

Yusuf blinked at him, slowly. He was hungry, and it was distracting. The scant handful of berries they scavenged for dinner were not enough. Idly, he wondered if this gift – curse? – of theirs would save them from starvation.

“Nicolò,” the man repeated insistently. He pointed at himself. “Nicolò di Genova.”

Oh. Something settled in Yusuf’s bones, something that felt contentment at learning his mate’s name—he clenched his fists, palms breaking out in cold sweat, and did not respond. He was afraid of what might come out of his mouth if he did.

The invader’s face closed off more and more the longer the pause went on, until the silence had gone excruciating in its awkwardness. Finally Yusuf sighed, long and resigned through his nose, and pointed at himself.

“Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Kaysani, called al-Tayyib,” he said, and the immediate relief at giving in was worse than the previous tension.

Correction. The pleased smile that suddenly appeared on the invader’s – Nicolò’s – face at Yusuf’s answer, a smile that slowly curled through hismouth and made his—fuck, his _astonishing_ eyes transform into a sight that caused the thing in Yusuf’s bones to fucking _purr—_

 _That_ was worse than everything that came before, put together.

*

On the second day, Nicolò died while killing two of his fellow Christian knights who were threatening a farmer’s family. Yusuf killed the third. When he was done, he turned and gathered Nicolò’s body up in his arms to hide the extent of his wounds from the family as they knit themselves back together. When Nicolò woke and realized where he was, he went very, very still. 

“Yusuf,” he murmured, near voiceless, the puff of air from his lips brushing softly against Yusuf’s cheek. It was a long moment before Yusuf could make himself let go.

Later while burying the bodies, “Why?” he asked in passable Greek. “They were your brothers, your comrades—”

He was unprepared for Nicolò’s flinch. “They burned _Jerusalem,”_ he replied eventually, in the same tongue, stabbing the spade down into the earth with the strength he used to kill the knights. To kill Yusuf outside the walls, days ago. He said nothing more, and Yusuf did not press him.

*

_Eating ass is more Joe’s thing than Nicky’s. On any other lazy summer’s day, he’d be the one spreading his lover out on the bed with the windows open and sunshine flooding in, riling Nicky up with lips and fingers and tongue until he has his alpha growling beneath him, desperate to come._

_But it’s_ this _lazy summer’s day, so it’s Joe’s turn to melt facedown into the bedspread, heavy with seed and satisfaction. Purring deep in his chest, floating out of his head and shivering with head-to-toe pleasure as Nicky devours him open-mouthed, traces his rim with his tongue in maddening circles – dipping in every so often – licking and sucking up his slick and any traces of come that his womb hasn’t yet absorbed. It’s filthily glorious and Joe wants more,_ _voracious in his greed._

_He says—moans—as much to Nicky, who rumbles something Joe doesn’t quite catch as he’s too busy arching his back in response to the sudden vibrations shocking through skin and flesh. Nicky laughs against him, which only makes it worse. Truly, he has passed from this mortal coil and somehow sprawled his way into Paradise._

_He says that to Nicky, too, who has to stop and laugh some more. “My God, how I love you,” he says after he catches his breath while Joe grins dopily into the pillow, filled with glowing warmth. Right up to the moment when Nicky hooks both thumbs into his hole and pulls – gently, tenderly – and the grin slides right off his face as he fucking_ wails.

*

“You can kill me,” Nicolò offered, days later, when Yusuf still could not look at him directly, “if you wish.”

Yusuf did look at him then, across yet another little campfire. They were following what was left of the refugees to Asqalan, trailing them half a day behind, making sure no Christian soldiers came after them to finish the massacre.

“Even if it were to take permanently this time, which we both know it will not, it would not undo anything that’s been done,” he said. “I’d dull the edge of my blade for nothing.” Grief and rage had already begun to curdle, to grow sour and hard, in Yusuf’s gut. And yet nothing would smother the longing, the pull towards this...this man with his large hands and striking eyes and offering of the first morsel of food to Yusuf each night and taking of the first watch to let Yusuf sleep and killing of his brothers-in-arms to defend Yusuf. Already, he knew that to walk away would be to tear something inside him. He could do it, but it would not be pleasant.

Nicolò inclined his head, eyes lowered. In acceptance. In _submission,_ of all the fucking things. Something dark and satisfied rose up in Yusuf’s belly at the sight. 

They held there for a moment, caught by...something, Yusuf didn’t know what. Then Nicolò said, “I’ll take first watch,” as he had every night prior, and Yusuf let the scalding words poised on his tongue slip away without much of a fight. What would be the point? He could not walk away, but then, neither could Nicolò.

*

“Bath,” Yusuf said when they reached Asqalan, before they’d even found a place to stay for the night. “You smell like a cow that’s been slaughtered five times over.”

“Seven,” Nicolò corrected. Yusuf turned his head to stare, and— yes, that was the faintest edge of a smile on the Frank’s dour face. Would wonders never fucking cease.

They would not, apparently. Because after Nicolò emerged still gently damp, hair drying and skin gleaming, Yusuf got one whiff of his scent finally unmarred by dirt and blood and shit – one glimpse of his expressive mouth without the covering of a rat’s nest of a beard, to say nothing of the firmness of his ass and the width of his shoulders unburdened by armor – and immediately had to turn away before he lost control of himself entirely.

“Let’s go,” he said, ignoring how harsh his voice had gone, and plunged himself directly into the crush of humanity in the streets. Anything to banish the mouthwatering sight and smell scored into his senses.

Alas, Nicolò kept up easily. And attraction went both ways, he knew this. He knew it because everywhere he turned, pale eyes were upon him, steady and burning worse than ever. 

Sharing a room would be hell. 

*

_Soft cotton sheets and even softer towels. Cool water to drink. Kisses along his cheeks and forehead where the fever has begun to fade. Joe drifts along the currents of contentment, half-asleep and finally, finally sated while Nicky cleans them up and then slips back into bed in their usual position outside of heat, his back to Joe’s front._

_Joe clings to the body of his mate in his arms, still craving the solid weight of him, touch and scent more soothing than arousing now. “My love,” he whispers into the warm skin at the base of Nicky’s neck. “Thank you.”_

_“Beloved.” Nicky touches the back of Joe’s hand where it holds him close. “Always.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [Tumblr.](https://lazaefair.tumblr.com/)


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